TAGLIONE (TALIONE). - Use and penal law first enunciated in the "Covenant Code" (Ex. 20:24; 23:12), where it deals with compensation due to the injured party in cases of blows, depending on whether they resulted in personal injury or not. "If there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise" (ibid. 21:23-25).
In Lev. 24:19-20, in a series of penal prescriptions, it is similarly stated: "If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Just as he injured the other person, so he is to be injured." Deut. 19:19-21 prescribes to judges: "You shall do to him (the false accuser) as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you will purge the evil from among you, and the rest will hear of it and be afraid. You must not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." This is satisfaction given to the offended party. The offended party tends to exact more. The Mosaic prescription, by limiting vengeance to reciprocity, mitigated its harshness and especially prevented its escalation, which would have occurred under the ancient Semitic custom of blood vengeance, which implicated the entire clan or family of the offended party. Similar prescriptions are found in the Code of Hammurabi (§ 196 ff.) and the Roman law of the Twelve Tables, from which the term "taglione" derives: "Si membrum rupit... talio esto" (Table VIII). What appears to be a harsh law was therefore originally a mitigation of primitive sentiments. Something harsh and immature is also evident in the fact that the law of talion does not consider the case of intentional harm, but only harm inflicted, regardless of the intention of the responsible party.
There is progress in the fact that legislation, inspired by the constant norm of restoring justice and peace without neglecting to punish guilt, entrusts its execution to the judges.